On December 12, 2018, members of the Circle of Excellence in Marketing (CEM) visited the newly founded start-up Lytt in Muenster. Two former students of the University of Muenster brought their idea of a digital person of trust for employees into life and have recently been awarded the founders scholarship EXIST. They are creating a software, which enables employees to contact third party mediators anonymously in case of discrimination, harassment, or other negative experiences at work they need help with.

When being responsible for sales management, one crucial task is the identification and selection of potentially successful sales employees. The importance of the recruitment process results from the assumption, that a substantial part of what characterizes high-performers lies in his or her given aptitude. In this vein, Richard McFarland, Professor at ESSEC Business School in Paris, started his lecture last Friday by saying “You can’t teach smart”. In addition, he emphasized the risk of hiring the wrong salesperson by stating that costs of an employee’s bad sales performance could make up to two annual salaries – depending on how much it has taken to detect it at all.

Last week, Mars visited the Marketing Center Muenster for a guest lecture in the Sales Management course. In their presentation, Nexan Chopra, E-Commerce Leader Germany and Marcel Hahne, Customer Business Director for Mars Petcare, talked about e-commerce and omnichannel-management at Mars.